


pagan angel and a borrowed car

by aosc



Series: I Swear by the Day of Resurrection [1]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Religion Changes, Alternate Universe - Supernatural (TV) Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-13 23:52:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11196078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aosc/pseuds/aosc
Summary: Road tripping: The (not overtly) Righteous Man and a dawn of time-old Angel Of The Lord edition.





	pagan angel and a borrowed car

* * *

 

Malik pants, attempts for the breath not to become wheezing, needling. He’s not overtly subtle as it is – stealth, in its own right something that can arguably achieve one’s goal in less bloodshed and more nuance, has its time and place. This is not one.

 

The demon hisses, ringlets of black smoke twisting before him. It undulates in and out of its attempt at staying stable, the effect of a mirage at dawn in the desert, not quite formless. It’s not succeeding fantastically, but he’ll give it points for trying.

 

It strikes forward. Malik feels it in him. He neatly sidesteps; just a quick one two to the left and back. The demon spittles. It follows. Malik almost closes his eyes; wants to feel the movements of the fight through to his core. He feels –

 

“The Righteous Man, so light on his feet.”

 

When he opens his eyes, naught but a second later, the demon has ceased in the midst of the empty barn. The perpetually murky light makes it seem larger than it is. Fuller.

 

Malik raises an eyebrow. He rights himself. “Complimented on my footwork by Hell spawn? Check. It’s my first time.”

 

The demon, though void of a proper head, nonetheless tilts its imitation of one. “Child,” it says, and, really, “You shouldn’t speak so easily of _spawns_. Not now, when you too know the Fire so intimately.”

 

A slash. It shouldn’t – shouldn’t hurt. He’s prepared for it – has recounted all of the seconds between Azazel’s sessions simply because he’ll have to numb the wound to scar tissue. This – it shouldn’t affect him. Some lowly foot soldier taking a dig at him.

 

The demon’s formless lips tilt. “Master Azazel has indeed tamed you.”

 

The stake in his hand chafes. Small wood chips are needling in his palm. His internal clock, though thoroughly shot to shit – since – tells him it’s time to end this. He’ll need to pull back on the road soon. “Sorry,” he says, “I really need to finish this up. Time waits for no man.”

 

The demon’s shapeless mouth sneers. It laughs. “Whomever said you were simply a _man_?”

 

Malik counts his heartbeat until it’s slowed to something resembling normality. Breathes until nothing hitches. He looks at the demon, and considers his exits. He says nothing. The barn has one side door to the far west, one large, barred cattle entering straight north. Outside is lined with salt, bar for the small door. Technically, though infinitesimally larger trouble, would be barring the demon inside and burning the barn to the ground. Holy fire, after all, is not contagious for nature. It’ll stay within its bounds.

 

Something outside quakes. Puts a fork of pulse and thunder through the earth. Malik starts. The wood chips dig deeper into the flesh of his palm. “What – “ he mutters, but more to himself. The weather at twilight had been discolored, but still. Not bruised and waiting, holding its breath for a storm incoming. And, he watches the demon flicker, this low level creature has no effect on the temporal conditions.

 

Another rumble emits from outside. It encompasses earth and heaven, somehow. It comes from nowhere, and everywhere. This next level superstition is far above Malik’s normal level, but when you’ve been to the carnal depths of Jahannam and back, he figures nature and the divine ought to forgive him for any eventual missteps.

 

The demon snarls. It’s a sudden noise Malik’s unprepared for. It pitches forward in a half disintegrated cloud of smoke, clipping for him. “Half human _abomination_ ,” it snarls in sudden, wild and starch anger, “What business have you with _them_?”

 

Malik frowns. He evades the swerve of the demon, warding himself with the blessed wood. He says nothing; asking what the hell this is about won’t result in the demon getting confessional with him. So he grits his jaw, and lunges for the creature.

 

He’s never before heard a facade being struck by lightning. It’s a noise that jars down to your depths, chafes your bones and shatters your eardrums. It snaps, a blunt force stab of pain, and Malik feels the trail of something slick down one side of his face. He brings his one hand up to shield his chest, not his face. Can, at least, count on having scrubbed one instinctual slip out for another, in the face of a faceless, shapeless void of _danger._

 

The light, for an instant, turns blinding.

 

Then everything blacks out, and the demon’s scream penetrates, seemingly from afar, through the blood thickening in his ear.

 

*

 

He wakes dying.

 

Three feet below ground, buried firmly in the wet Utah soil, Malik Al–Sayf wakes, gasping for breath he can’t breathe, and air he won’t find.

 

Burial is, for all intents, the final rite of passage for those about to enter the afterlife, in one capacity or the other. Not always – in the midst of life, Dante found himself in a dark, dark forest. There, he followed a snarling behemoth of a cat through the stickling and difficult tread, only to come upon the gates, and the gatekeeper. He was not buried.

 

But for the most part, Malik knows that to be sunk deep into the earth, to be buried beneath solid, packed earth – you have to be, for all intents and purposes, dead.

 

He attempts to breathe again, through his nose, but only serves to inhale more dust. He quells the cough that threatens to stutter out of him, raw and overwhelming. If he does, he’ll suffocate. He scrabbles for purchase above; pushes up. He digs his fingernails, clipped and bloody, and claws. Some give, but there is no air. Some dirt gives beneath the crooks he makes of his fingers, but it’s not enough. There is no air, and he’s three feet below ground.

 

He thinks of dying, but –

 

Wasn’t he dead? Had he not, like men are, been buried because he’d died. Had he not spent three eternities in Jahannam? On the rack, beneath Azazel’s prodding, bending, slicing, hurting hands? Had he not, after two eternities had passed, surrendered in the face of pain, and darkness, and put other men on that rack? Used his own hands? Had he not died, for three eternities, only to be brought back just the same, to do it to other men?

 

He can’t breathe. He pushes harder. Scratches, until he feels his fingernails split down the middle and give way for stray rocks and ill grated sand. His lungs feel ripe to burst – like he has, simultaneously, no air in them at all, and then way too much. He barely registers the blood, and the pain, in his fingers. The all encompassing feeling of quickly (not slowly, like they write) feel the breath being wrung – torn, out of him.

 

The final reserves in his lungs deplete. He has thirty seconds, he gathers.

 

He pushes harder; with his shoulders, and back. Puts a shove that’s more animal than man into the dirt above. Shoves against the black spots and starbursts swimming and looping in his peripheral vision –

 

His wrists push up, above ground, and release topples of dirt that fall on his face.

 

Malik breathes.

 

*

 

From its own ashes, the phoenix was wrought – brought to life again, yet doomed to repeat but a cyclic wait for death. Perhaps it unconsciously longs for death, after so many cycles. After so many deaths. So many rebirths.

 

Malik, though not entirely sure how, has thus been reborn. He has risen from his grave, feeling for a pulse he finds, on his neck, on his wrist. He is still himself – he still remembers. He is his own. He was, perhaps, burned by the fires of Hell. But from Hell, he has been wrought – has been given new life.

 

The light burns on his retinas, burns long after he’s closed his eyes. He crouches in on himself, the stake dropped at his own feet. Instinct tells him to ward his face – his eyes, from whatever it is that’s going to cause some permanent eye damage. The hissing from the demon has completely subsided, so he assumes it’s dead. The only noise is the rattling – the rattling of what?

 

It’s full bodied. It almost wreaks him sideways. He bites down on his bottom lip until he splits skin and tastes blood, and flesh, but the light does not dim, and the noise doesn’t subside –

 

The noise reaches a crescendo. A high pitched whistle that makes hot blood pulse out of his ears. Malik can feel his teeth rattle in his jaw, the bone itself jarring against his skull.

 

The light whites out. It becomes silent.

 

“Malik,” beckons a deep, scratchy voice.

 

*

 

He walks along a small, slithering interstate in the baking sun. He’s retained clothes, however unlikely – the same threadbare jeans and t-shirt he last remembers wearing sometime in the rolling Wyoming prairiescape. He pulls a hand through his hair, slicks it back with sweat. He doesn’t, at the time, register the burn on his shoulder. He’s much too famished, too dehydrated and swelling with the aftermath of adrenaline, to notice.

 

When he does, pitting a stop in an abandoned gas station, its white paint flaky and dusty, the wash basin he’s leaned over in cracked porcelain – he stretches to reach up with the same hand to roll the sleeve of the t-shirt up over the knob of his shoulder.

 

The pain caused by the handprint, earlier just a throbbing sum of all of his aching parts, intensifies. It jolts through him, too starch and red and unhealed, palm splayed and fingers tapering over the peak of the bone.

 

He swallows against nausea that crawls up his throat. He can’t stop here, he’s – he’s got to reach Kadar, before his brother can traipse off and do something stupid (unless he already has).

 

*

 

“Malik,” says a gravelly, scratchy voice. As though it’s screamed itself hoarse, or not been used in a very long time. Malik can sort of relate – he’s done both recently, figuratively and literally.

 

Through the shower of sparks that still rain from the broken light bulbs in the ceiling, Malik sees the creature clearly for the very first time. Part of the roof has caved in. In its place, afternoon light, rosy hued and orange, spills. If it’s rained, the thing has brought with it a new dawn.

 

“Accounted for,” says Malik. He’s picked the stake up again, heaved to his feet. He feels somewhat unstable still, but he supposes that’s just what you’ll get for going on a binge hunt, eating little, drinking less, and then being knocked about by –

 

By whatever the thing is.

 

From its moderate distance, it’s at least wearing a human shape, which, small mercies, Malik thinks. It’s tall, with bulging cheek bones and a dark buzz cut. Its cupid bow is heavily scarred, and it wears bland clothing. Black jeans, black tee. A haphazard jacket. It looks the part of any person, but then again, that’s what demons do. They possess some ordinary housewife, waits until the children come ambling through the door at mid-afternoon, and sharpen their knifes. Malik has seen bloodied children and strangled wives and husbands. He has seen lovers, torn apart and slung haphazardly in heaps. Taped motel rooms and bloodied quaint patios in moderate income and a family of four-suburban America. Looking as non-out of place as possible, that’s what demons do.

 

He checks his breathing. The creature’s head is slightly tilted. Its brow is furrowed, as though it’s lightly annoyed by this entire ordeal. Well, that’s a tough break, this isn’t Malik’s fault. “I’ve introduced myself. It’s rude not to respond in turn.”

 

“You didn’t introduce yourself,” says the creature, pointedly, “I called you, whereafter you answered.”

 

Malik frowns. “Okay,” he enunciates, slowly, “So I didn’t. But you seem to know me pretty well anyway. I can’t say the same for you.”

 

The creature doesn’t reply, it seems to mull it over for a bit. It straightens out of the almost slouch it’d fallen into. Its head slowly rights until it’s no longer tilted questioning. “Malik,” it repeats, as though calling Malik by name carries weight – is some sort of ritual calling. “That’s me,” he replies, and attempts to not let his attention stray. This is probably what it wants – to disarm him.

 

The creature starts walking towards him. Malik raises the stake higher, grips it tighter, until his wrist is entirely straight before him.

 

“I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition.”

 

*

 

Malik walks, until he can no longer walk. His memory attempts to flash back to the flattened stretch of forest around his grave: the whispers that permeated the air. The singed and scorched earth a few feet out of the unmarked grave’s perimeter. It hadn’t attempted to get to him; it’d gotten to him, alright. It’d gotten to him, pulled him up, and cursed everything in its way on the way up, notwithstanding stopping to collect 200 at the road junction.

 

It attempts, as soon as his mind strays.

 

He focuses on the burn of the sun on the back of his neck. Over the expanse of his shoulders. The relentless southern American sun, hot and persistent. When his thoughts wander, he thinks of the single goal he’s pursuing: civilization.

 

Civilization. Thereafter, Kadar.

 

He’d pray, were he still a religious man, for his baby brother’s safety. As it is, he walks on, intent on finding the answer to that out for himself.

 

*

 

“I’ve certainly prayed, a number of times, no less, for His attention. For His intervention,” says Malik, and cocks his hip, “But I wouldn’t have thought it’d come in the form of you.”

 

The creature does nothing. “I wouldn’t put myself in the same room as Him,” it says, and – is that a trace of sarcasm Malik detects? “But faith takes on many shapes. It does not look much like anything. What says His messengers have to adhere to some special setup?”

 

Malik raises an eyebrow. “Probably the apple cheeked cherubs in the Sistine Chapel frescos. Though I couldn’t be sure.” The creature’s face remains impasse. Malik refuses to be the one to cave first. “That can hardly classify as blasphemous, come on. Even if you _were_ a heavenly messenger. Which I have my doubts about.”

 

“Now _that_ , is blasphemous,” replies the creature, “The Sistine Chapel… Come on.”

 

Malik rolls his eyes, “Right. Sorry. I’m used to thinking about this in terms of the predominantly white and Christian. Demons, Hell – we’re smack in the middle of America. On the good days, they ignore how brown I am.”

 

The creature simply waits, says nothing in turn. Well, so much for weighing in on modern day racism and the issue of segregation. “Wouldn’t a demon hate to be thought of as a creature of Allah?”

 

“We have all been fashioned by the Prophet, even the jinn - demons. But, alas – ” says the creature, “Good thing I’m not a demon, so I won’t really care.”

 

“Hmm, no,” says Malik, “You’re just ‘the one who gripped me tight’ – “

 

“And raised you from perdition. Sorry about the mark, by the way. That’s not usually what I do.”

 

Malik freezes. Something catches in his gut. “My – what,” he says.

 

The creature tilts its head. Its gaze flashes from Malik’s face, to somewhere over his shoulder. On his shoulder. “It’ll fade,” it adds, helpfully, just as Malik feels this might really be the Twilight Zone, for real.

 

*

 

The first three numbers he tries are all out of service.

 

The fourth, a Verizon subscription belonging to a Faheem Hamad, based out of New Jersey, dials, before it sparks with static and a signal. Malik’s heart stutters painfully in his throat.

 

The line clicks. “Yes?”

 

Malik barely dares to believe – but –

 

“Brother?” he says, “Kadar?”

 

Something snags in his brother’s throat. It’s evident even over the bad connection. Something – quakes, ruptures. Then goes quiet.

 

The line goes dead.

 

*

 

Malik figures that he’s probably considered suicide in a more practical, hands on-way than letting the creature – whatever it is, into his car, but it’s going to be a close cut.

 

It scowls at the car. “This it? This is your means of transportation?”

 

“I wasn’t aware His messengers get a free pass to Jannah as well as an Aventador for entering His service,” replies Malik tartly, and slams the door to the jacked, dirt white El Camino.

 

“So now you’ve suspended your disbelief,” comes the muffled voice of the creature, as it follows Malik into the car. The El Camino rumbles to life beneath Malik’s fingers, where he’s concentrating all of his ire into massaging the torn wires, rather than take what the creature is saying to heart – or thought. “I haven’t suspended any disbelief,” Malik replies, “I didn’t believe anything to begin with.”

 

“You’re not a non-believer,” says the creature.

 

“What would be the point of not believing, if I were a devout believer…”

 

“Well, in the Prophet, I mean. Let’s put me aside for this.”

 

Malik snaps around. He has to bite his lip as to not let it curl in a flare of temper, “You’re tenacious as my mother was with the time of Isha. It’s difficult to keep your faith when all the reward I’ve ever gotten for it was dead family, and a fiery trip to Jahannam, don’t stop and collect on the way.”

 

He doesn’t realize he’s exerted himself until he snaps his jaw shut, words run dry, and has to pull for breath.

 

The creature – whose dark eyes are regarding Malik unfathomably, its lips full and – damnably attractive, a little pursed, says, “I’m Altaïr. I’m the one – “

 

“Who’s going to follow me right back down into the pit, unless he shuts up,” snaps Malik, and cranks the gear into third, thumping the gas pedal screeching beneath the sole of his sneaker. He isn’t listening to another word this thing is saying.

 

*

 

The creature – which insists on Malik calling him Altaïr, as is his assumed name in this form of his, enjoys listening to sugary pop music, and slumping so far into his seat to Malik’s right that Malik suspects he’d melt through the floor if the atoms binding him together were to only slightly unravel.

 

“Taylor Swift,” says Malik, flatly, as the – Altaïr, cranks the volume. “Now I see I was never allowed very far into the pit. This is the true manifestation of the inner circles.”

 

Altaïr snorts, “I’ll give you points for humor, even if it would be enough to send you back there on its blasphemous merit alone, were He to take affront to that kind of thing.”

 

“Which is to say – that he doesn’t really.”

 

“He isn’t without humor,” replies Altaïr, in that bland way of his Malik has quickly come to recognize as mildly sarcastic, despite only having been on the road with him for a scarce day.

 

“Is He now,” says Malik, “You’ve met Him?”

 

“Eh. A ‘meeting’ is a very grounded, physical concept. In a time and space continuum, it assumes you, in your human flesh and blood, are to ‘meet’ with someone who’s very much also humanly realized. It’s flawed, speaking metaphysically. I haven’t _met_ the Prophet, I’m more – a manifestation of His will. I’m his loudspeaker, if you’d like. I’ve never ‘met’ him, yet I know Him.”

 

“Oh, great,” says Malik, “The existential bullshit doesn’t suit your look. I thought it was never going to end. You could’ve just said you’re a messenger.”

 

Altaïr smirks, razor sharp and haughtily amused, “ _Au contraire_ to my look, I like to sound smart.”

 

“Take off your beret, loudspeaker, and quit wailing along to 1983, and that comment won’t sound like a terrible lie.”

 

“It’s 1989.”

 

Malik cuts narrowly into a caravan of family convertibles. He chances a frown at Altaïr. “I’m sorry?”

 

The creature raises an eyebrow, “If you want to insult my girl, please at least get the title of the album right. Misinformation isn’t going to score you shade points.”

 

“Lord, Allah, give me strength,” mutters Malik, and blinks aggressively out into the left lane again, “That _is_ my shade. That I don’t know, and that I don’t care.”

 

“Please,” says Altaïr, and pronounces his point by hitting every note in the chorus that follows.

 

*

 

Malik is a creature of pragmatism purely by necessity.

 

He’s not, per se, so in nature. It’s more of a rote instilled in his body: ensure survival first, comfort is secondary. Comfort will, in their – his and Kadar’s, line of work, always be secondary, anyway. It’s not terribly hard to make sure it stays that way.

 

They pit stop for gas alongside the 45, a few miles outside of Naples. It’s nearing dusk. The sky is purplish and bruised, mottled the farther it falls into the horizon.

 

“Can you drive?” asks Malik, looking dubiously over at Altaïr.

 

Altaïr looks, if anything, affronted. “Do you know how long I’ve been down here,” he replies flatly. Malik raises an eyebrow. Altaïr concedes the point with an exaggerated eye roll. “ _Yes_ , I can drive. What, you getting tired?”

 

“Only of my present company. I asked out of pure necessity; I’m not stopping, and since you’re – “ he waves a hand for emphasis, “Not human, you’re less likely to need breaks. Hence, can you drive.”

 

“You were buried for four months,” says Altaïr in response, and shrugs, “Didn’t you rest already?”

 

Malik is – surprised, at the need to stop, to twist around and stare at Altaïr.

 

Surprised at the fact that he feels that’s crossing a line. That it uproots the ugliness he’s desperately attempting to squash down – Azazel’s shapeless form, his formless laugh, his prodding, and tearing, and cutting hands, that are not hands –

 

“Whoa, okay, bad move. I’m sorry – here, c’mere – ”

 

Malik registers Altaïr’s touch for long enough to twist out of it. It’s hot on his skin, for some reason.

 

“ _Don’t_ ,” he snarls, and takes another instinctive step back when the creature reaches out for him. Altaïr looks up at him. Malik looks away. He doesn’t look back as he turns away, stalking forth and into the roadside gas station instead. Altaïr’s words remain bubbling beneath his skin, his rage sickly and invasive and overwhelming him at that point.

 

He browses the shelves aimlessly. He counts the packets of travel-sized cereal bars, and the condom wrappers, and the pipes on the gasoline tanks. He tells himself to breathe, in and out, to ignore the bursts of red in the corners of his vision.

 

He buys a pay phone, and loads a few tens into the cash card that goes along with it. The bottles of water he’d lifted from the first place he’d walked into – after, are refilled in the trunk. He buys another pair, as well as a pocket sized Red Label, just in case he feels like running himself off the road anytime soon under the influence of whiskey, rather than his present company.

 

The cashier doesn’t look twice at him, for which Malik is grateful. He pays in stolen, crumpled dollar bills, and sets about his way.

 

Altaïr is mercifully quiet, as Malik returns to the El Camino. The creature is looking at him a little like Malik is a cornered animal, teeth bared and fur on end. Good, he thinks, deriving some satisfaction from the ugly rash inside of him that tells him that he is not to be fucked with. From the ashes of the afterworld, he was wrought, a monster, sleek and instrument-sharp, a tool to use to harm. Demon, or Angel, or even God himself – Malik revs the engine of the Chevy, and thinks: _don’t_ fuck with me.

 

*

 

They make it unscathed out of the dead of the Utah night, that’s hot and buzzing with fat insects and the promise of another sweltering day ahead. Altaïr switches places with Malik amicably enough, saying as little as possible in the process. It’s funny, Malik finds, how silent the creature has suddenly become. Sunk into some form of almost – meditative state. He’d find it more funny if he didn’t find it to be almost as aggravating, since he himself, well, how come he gets to remain worked up? How come this is all Altaïr takes away from it?

 

“You’re mad,” says Altaïr, almost on cue, as he cranes his head forward to spot the sign that signals they can soon abandon the interstate in favor of the 44, towards Manila and the state line road crossing into Wyoming.

 

“You’re a douchebag,” replies Malik, like an adult.

 

Altaïr snorts. “I _did_ apologize,” he says, “It was a shitty thing to say. I admit it.”

 

Malik ignores that. He’s not quite ready to let him off the hook, anyway, mostly because he still feels he can benefit from being mad a while yet. “If you are who you say you are, I have a question.”

 

Altaïr maneuvers the wheel beneath his palms. He glances over at Malik, “By all means,” he says.

 

“Why did you save me?”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Well, why me? I made that deal, it was my choice. There wasn’t anything to question about it, and no reason to pull me out of it. So why?”

 

Altaïr is quiet for some time. The roil of the engine beneath them precedes all answers, and the blur of black and pale scenery, illuminated by the car’s navigating headlines, color the silence in the pockets of space Altaïr’s reply will leave, regardless of what it’ll be.

 

“Because He commanded it.”

 

Malik turns, in full, to Altaïr. The creature’s face is impasse, wiped and void of emotion.

 

“That’s it?” exclaims Malik, “That’s your bullshit answer?”

 

Altaïr releases a frustrated sigh. “Look,” he says, “If I had a better answer, I’d give it. Some things just are. We weren’t created to question His will. Can one of your body parts question what you ask them to do just because the request doesn’t make sense, or just because it lacks reasoning or basis? No.”

 

“Something tells me that analogy’s lacking.”

 

“ _Malik_ ,” says Altaïr in response, in that gravelly, scratchy voice that makes Malik’s stomach clench, but in that voice which is also a little hot, a little irritated, “I don’t give a fuck about what you think about it. That’s the way it is. The Prophet wanted you out, so I pulled you _out_. Now I’m driving your stolen car in the middle of ass crack nowhere America with you – do I know why I do it? No. I was told to remain with you, so I am. I have orders, so I follow them. Without question, without say. If that’s something you’ve got a problem digesting, you let me know, and we’ll take it from there.”

 

The peaks and hills of Bear Mountain, looming ahead of them in the poor light, grow closer, the longer they sit in silence. Malik doesn’t disturb it.

 

*

 

One day, Malik had woken up, and his father had clocked the twenty first day on which he had neither showed up nor let Malik know where to come find him.

 

On that day, when dawn cracked the sky open, washed out blood pink and hushed orange yellow, he’d said to himself, “I need to find my brother,” and searched out all of the usual, and unusual, hideouts for the keys to the Impala.

 

Three days later, he’d found himself in heady SoCal, navigating the dwindling roads of the Stanford Law campus, situated just offsite from the broad university buildings themselves.

 

Him and Altaïr switch places in the breaking dawn along Sheep Creek Gap. Malik stops just outside the car for a bit, leaning into its cool side. He breathes in the reserve air, aware of that they’ll pass into the desert and concrete build of civilization soon enough. Somewhere where it isn’t as undisturbed, as quiet, as it is here.

 

“Where _are_ we going?” asks Altaïr.

 

Malik cracks an eye open. He’s on the other side, face turned into the pale sun, eyes closed. The light makes the concaves in his cheeks and the strong line of his nose stand out, hollowed out in shadow. Malik’d agree to the ridiculous notion of Altaïr truly being an angel just by the fact that he’s undeniably, unfairly attractive. Probably goes a long way, luring people from sin to righteousness. To repent their past mistakes.

 

Malik breathes deeply, one more last time. “We’re going to find my brother,” he says. He gets back into the car.

 

*

 

Kadar has always been Malik’s to keep.

 

Since he were a kid, wide eyed and naïvely sincere. Through the aftermath of mom’s death and through fights with dad. Through ailing faith, and scarce food storages. Through dropping into one town and skipping over the next. Switching schools, keeping to yourself – through dad’s devout hunts, his sullen, broken silences.

 

Malik has read Kadar’s favorite passages in the Qur’an over and over, until his little brother falls into restless sleep. He’s slept as a cradle above him through thunderstorms, both quakes of lightning above the roof as well as father’s mood beneath it.

 

He’d taught him how to absorb the recoil of a shotgun into his shoulder, and how to stitch up a flesh wound. How to recite the words that purifies a spirit. How to mask the flinch in your wrist as you cut cleanly through your palm to gather blood for a ritual sacrifice, or to paint holy wards.

 

He’s supported him through thick and thin, even when he’d most made it seem like he didn’t. Taking off, Stanford, leaving their father to his devices, and for Malik to follow alone in his footsteps.

 

He dreams of finding his brother that night in his toy box size flat, knocking him to the floor.

 

Kadar snarls beneath him. Malik thinks, detachedly: his brother needs practice. In the dark interior of the apartment, this could’ve been anyone. Any _thing_. Kadar struggles, though futile, and bucks his hips, nearly unseating Malik in the process. Malik is leaning on his upper thighs, gripping his arms above his head. “If I’d have been anything else, I could’ve had you killed in three ways right now.”

 

Kadar freezes. “ – Malik?” he asks, and Allah, but his baby brother sounds shocked.

 

“Evening, brother,” replies Malik. He lets Kadar go lax beneath his grip, and lets him go. He strikes out at the splay of Kadar’s leg, on the inner of his thigh. Raps him in the armpit, and prods at the vulnerable tilt of his neck, “Here, here, and here. You’re _entirely_ too open.”

 

Malik feels the quake in Kadar’s hips moments before his brother huffs and flips them over. He feels how his baby brother’s undulated his legs until his left calf has wrapped around the inner of Malik’s knee, and has thus made his side partly immobile, the flip difficult to defend.

 

“You were saying,” says Kadar, flatly, and raises an eyebrow at where Malik now lays beneath him. Malik grins.

 

Kadar shuffles into the kitchenette. He grabs a bottle of water from the innards of his fridge, and throws it at Malik. Malik catches it, uncaps it. “California is horrible,” he remarks, “Even in the dead of night.”

 

“Nobody forced you to come,” replies Kadar, and takes a swig of his own.

 

“Perhaps I’m here on a hunt. Just stopping by to say hello.”

 

Kadar caps his bottle again. His face grows even more doubtful. “No, you’re not.”

 

“You wouldn’t know,” says Malik.

 

“I wouldn’t,” replies Kadar, “But you’re not. Because that’s not anything you would do.”

 

“Again: how would you know…”

 

“Because, brother mine,” says Kadar, exasperated, “I know you. End of that discussion. Now: why’re you _really_ here?”

 

Malik steels himself. What flashes past him: fights, and fights, and fights, with dad. Cleaning out the barrels in the sawed off shotgun they use for rock salt. Stitching up his side after a bad run-in with a shapeshifter, when his brother is hiccupping and thirteen, trying, angrily to hold his tears back.

 

Kadar leaving, hitching his thumb at a car along the interstate and getting in, his sparse duffel and backpack after him. Malik had supplied him with one of the pay phones they have in storage: said _, just tell me when you get there. Ditch this and get a new one later._

Malik levels Kadar with his gaze, ceases biting his lower lip bloody, and takes a deep breath. He never lets his brother’s gaze stray.

 

“Father’s on a hunting trip, and he hasn’t been home for some time.”

 

*

 

They pass through the sleepy, dusty Green River at midday, don’t stop, and fork off towards where the I-80 E continues towards Rawlins. Altaïr, who seems to think Malik’s bad mood has passed, so that it’s either okay to loop it back, or think that somehow, he’ll escape the wrath once it makes itself known, tunes back into his favorite Pandora station, and whistles along to most tracks.

 

“Would it kill you to consider anyone else,” mutters Malik, and blinks into the roundabout that takes them en route into Rock Springs.

 

“I’m hard to kill,” shrugs Altaïr, “But I do consider others. When they speak up. You’re just sullen.”

 

Malik ignores the jibe, “So I’m speaking up now. This is garbage.”

 

“Wow,” says Altaïr, and slaps a palm over his chest, “That’s hurtful. Ari finds you hurtful.”

 

“’Ari’?”

 

Altaïr sniffs, and indicates the speakers. Malik rolls his eyes, “Never mind. How come you actually _listen_ to this? And I’m not talking about the genre,” he adds, when it looks as though Altaïr is about to launch into another tirade about the speaking to a new generation thing he’s already victimized Malik with once, “I mean – you’re not from here. You’re not human. How come, practically, you walk, talk, and listen to music like one?”

 

“I’m not sure whether you’re saying I’m bad at being human, or if I’m too good at being one,” replies Altaïr, and peers over at Malik.

 

“I’m saying you’re not one, so why are you trying to be one. You’re, in all the scriptures and all the tellings, and according to yourself – a manifestation of the Prophet’s wills and wishes. The angels are His messengers. I can’t imagine what He’d want is for you to walk among His sinful creations and partake in their daily, insignificant lives, for eons upon eons, but do nothing about it?”

 

Altaïr shrugs, “I’ve been alive for far too long not to be inclined to take my orders to observe mankind somewhat liberally. Should He want me to do something, I do it. He hasn’t asked for me to cease doing what I’m doing here, since I’m not doing anything wrong – hence I continue going about my business exactly as I’ve always done it. I walk among you, I speak to you, I listen to you. To observe from afar is a shitty way of getting to know something. It doesn’t tell you anything about its true nature, or why it does whatever it is it does.”

 

“So, you play the devil’s advocate,” concludes Malik.

 

“I don’t intervene, so no, not really. If you insist on sinning, you bet your ass is still going to Al-nar when you die.”

 

“A loudspeaker. Who’s got nothing to say.”

 

“Look, Malik,” says Altaïr, “I’m not a preacher. I’m an angel. There’s a vast difference, and I’m pretty sure you’re just baiting, because you know that.”

 

“I’m not baiting you, you’ve just got shitty answers. It doesn’t make sense to just follow orders blindly, and then get caught out trying to justify it. You don’t know why you do what you do, you just do it. What even is that?”

 

“Allah, give me strength,” mutters Altaïr, and turns in his seat, “Okay, look: why do you do what you do?”

 

Malik veers to the left, blinking out into the barren landscape of the outer of his file. He purses his lips and lowers his foot onto the break pedal, slowing them down until they stop. The road, as it is, is pretty desolate, so not many cars pass them by as Malik leaves the ignition, but turns to face Altaïr head on. “What,” he replies, eloquent, annoyed.

 

“What I said,” repeats Altaïr, “Why do you do what you do? Hunt demons?”

 

“Because demons don’t kill themselves, so someone needs to?”

 

“That’s the only reason? Truly, your one reason for doing it?”

 

“This argument’s going nowhere,” snaps Malik, “I’m doing it because it needs to be done. Because my dad did it, and because I want to. Because demons have murdered my family, and tried to take my brother. Because it pisses me off that cosmically, those motherfuckers can do that and get away with it. And right now, because apparently, the Prophet exists – an honest to truth God, and what’s he doing about it? Sending his apostles down to Earth to dance the Kum ba yah and listen to whiny white British lyricists with a beat and a guitar crooning on about some lost love of his seventeen year old life? _Explain_ to me how that makes any more sense out of _your_ mission – than it does mine.”

 

“Sending me down to sentence any stray sinner, as according to the holy script, and punish him thereafter would thoroughly defeat the purpose of giving His creations free will, wouldn’t it?” snaps Altaïr. Malik sees something flash in his eyes, golden and otherworldly.

 

“Free will isn’t what’s important, according to the holy script,” argues Malik, though mostly, he’s deflated.

 

“The holy script is meant to be individually interpreted,” says Altaïr, whose will to rise to the argument seems equally lost, his words a little depleted of energy, “ _Faith_ is meant to be individually interpreted. We may pray to the very same institution, and we may all face the same direction when doing it. We may all observe sawm during the ninth month, and we may all observe the fatwas that our scholars introduce to us. But in the end, no one’s going to adhere to the Prophet’s words just the same as anyone else, and it isn’t His, nor His messengers’, job to look after every single one of you to ensure that you do. Faith is key, but so is the free will to decide that you believe it. That’s what you’ll be judged for, once you’ve done your part here. I’m here to observe, just as I’ve said. Nothing more, nothing less.”

 

Far ahead, the sun dips into the flat sandscape that permeates the state. Along Lincoln Highway, they’ll soon see the Red Desert. Malik briefly shutters his eyes. He thinks of his brother. And of Hell. Of judgment, and of the jury who takes you there.

 

“Good thing I’ve already staked out my spot in the fire, since there’s no way I’ll end up in any other place in the afterlife,” he says, and shifts the car into gear again.

 

*

 

Naturally, they run into a nest of wildly swinging, young vampires just outside of Rawlins, who’ve taken the guests at the Flying J along the highway, hostage. Naturally, Malik stumbles into this, rather than walks knowingly into the conflict and thus maybe, maybe, gets a shot at absolving the conflict ahead peacefully.

 

Then he thinks again, and decides: he fucking hates vampires, so he doesn’t much care about doing things peacefully.

 

“What the fuck went wrong here?” he exclaims, and steps out of the way for the newly minted Alpha, who comes at him at breakneck speed, claws and teeth bared. At the far end of the restaurant, Altaïr is shepherding what hostages he’s managed to draw together, toward the seclusion and (relative, Malik hopes) safety of the kitchens.

 

The Alpha says nothing, to which Malik is not surprised. It twists around, snaps its jaw at him, and comes at him again. Malik’s crowded towards the nearest bar stools, at a bad angle from his ambush. His shotgun is three paces away, kicked astray on the floor, but he’s got the bullets he wants in his right pocket. If he can just reach the gun –

 

The Alpha roars. It lunges for him, and Malik braces for its inevitable impact. They go down in a heap of limbs, Malik’s arms crossed before him, pressing up in the vampire’s throat, to keep it from bearing down on him and taking a chunk out of his closest bit of skin and muscle.

 

Malik scrabbles for purchase beneath it, and finds one of the stools’ legs, screwed solid into the floor. He leans into it with his left foot, intending to propel them across the floor as soon as the vampire, who’s 200 pounds of mean, demonic muscle, lets up a bit. He hits out with his right hand, fist knotted tight, and scores a skittering hit across its jaw. The vampire’s head snaps to the side, but all it accomplishes is making it wilder. Its lips curl, and its snarl intensifies. It attempts to bite in his forearm, but Malik forces it back, hitting it in its Adam’s apple with whatever strength he manages to muster up. It doesn’t seem to do much, but it’s at least one step farther away from being turned, on this very shitty day.

 

“Malik!” yells Altaïr. Malik’s unable to gauge from where, but he waves the hand he’s got relatively free still, and yells back, “Yeah, here!”

 

He sees the flash of Altaïr, moving faster than he’s seen him ever do, a blur and a breath later at Malik’s side. The angel’s face is, if he were allowed to be poetic, one of vengeance: terrifying such, darkened features and gold rimmed eyes, mouth harshly set. He reaches for the Alpha’s face, and Malik’s about to shout at him not to, when –

 

Altaïr reaches out, puts his palm with an otherworldly stillness, to the Alpha’s struggling forehead, and clenches the tendons in his hand.

 

The Alpha goes still. Then it shrieks, loud and painstakingly enough for Malik to cover his ears, rather than his throat, and instinctively close his eyes to the blinding sluice of light that emerges from where Altaïr’s palm broadens over the upper of the vampire’s face.

 

Something flashes, an instant in which something scorches, burns, before the light goes out. Whispers squall, coming and going, in its wake, but the insides of Malik’s eyelids retain their blackness. He slowly blinks up at the scene again.

 

The vampire topples over to the left, its weight easing off of Malik’s stomach with a stiffness that only comes with death. Malik crawls to sitting, slower than he intends. The vampire’s eyes are burned right out of their sockets, clean, unsoiled. Its lips are rounded and parted, the roof of its mouth pink and shaded, the jaw unnaturally hinged, lax. Apart from that, nothing else seems particularly out of the ordinary. Nothing, as far as Malik is able to see, is the cause of its instantaneous death.

 

Malik looks up at Altaïr. The angel – Malik’s quite convinced by now, looks back. His eyes retain a faint rim of light amber.

 

*

 

Rashid Sinan lives on the outskirts of Rawlins, in the adjacent building to a scrapyard. It’s not his, never was, but that’s where he settled when he first came to the US from Syria, fifty two years earlier. There’s a mosque over in Laramie, an hour and a half away, and rightly, Malik suspects that Rashid would’ve lived closer to it, had it, at the time, existed. As it is, he’s not someone who uproots easily, so that’s where he still lives, years and years later.

 

When they arrive, it’s well past twilight and into evening. Malik makes sure that he’s heard, that he revs the engine and that he kills it too quickly. The El Camino whines, but obediently goes quiet.

 

“He doesn’t take kindly to strangers sneaking up on him,” explains Malik, when Altaïr looks at him oddly for banging about as much as he does.

 

“Of course not,” is the only response he gets, slow, piqued.

 

He’d tried Rashid as well, as soon as he got to solid ground and a phone, a week and a half earlier. He’d gotten a killed line, a callous and rough “don’t call again”, that’d hurt Malik more than he cares to admit out loud. His mentor’s raw, scabbed over pain, reopening – yeah, he understands.

 

He knocks loudly.

 

When the door opens, Malik smells laundry detergent, tea leaves, and gun powder. Leveled at his face is a sawed off shotgun. Past it: his mentor. To Rashid’s credit, only his face is pale. His wrist is steady, unfolded into the gun.

 

“Malik – “ warns Altaïr. The angel, a few steps behind, shuffles forward.

 

“ _Don’t_ ,” snaps Malik. He holds Rashid’s gaze, even as he addresses Altaïr, “Don’t do anything. Mentor – it’s me. I _swear_ to you, it’s me.”

 

“You dare speak to me, you foul creature?” asks Rashid, his voice barely above a whisper, “We buried Malik. In the soil, he lays. In the soil, he remains.”

 

“Mentor,” says Malik, “I was buried in Utah. There’s a wasteland there now. I was pulled out – pulled back. I need you to trust me.”

 

Rashid hesitates. The faintest of tremors runs through his wrist, a hairline fracture. He looks briefly past Malik. “Your – companion,” he says, delicately spitting the final word, “Where is your brother?”

 

“Kadar’s as unreachable as you,” Malik mutters. He inhales, and smells more rock salt. More residue from the chalked out pipes, “This is Altaïr. I can explain him later. Or he can. Just – please quit waving salt in my face like you actually think it’s gonna make me sneeze.”

 

“Language, young one,” snaps his mentor, almost on rote. He catches himself, and Malik’s breath snags. Rashid slowly, haltingly lowers the shotgun, to rest at Malik’s breast bone. “Malik – truly, is it you?”

 

Malik exhales loudly. Something drops from his stomach: a realized weight. Actual and real. He very nearly stumbles across the threshold in relief. “It’s me,” he says, “In the flesh. However that’s supposed to work.”

 

Under his mentor’s watchful eye, he takes a swig of both blessed water, and salted. He cuts the width of his bicep with the ornate silver knife he carries in his boot, and steps across the warded floors of Rashid’s kitchen. Nothing happens.

 

His mentor drops the shotgun at the closest flat surface, and embraces him tightly. Malik shuts his eyes, breathes in the scent of his mentor’s clothes, of familiarity, and comfort. “It’s really me,” he mutters.

 

“I see that,” says Rashid, “Though I’m loath to believe it. I can’t understand – How is it truly you, here?“

 

“Ask Mr. Loudspeaker in the corner over there,” says Malik. He tugs loose, gently. He indicates Altaïr, “He’s an Angel of the Prophet.”

 

*

 

Malik’s mentor brews them strong, black tea, and allows it to steep for a precise amount of minutes before he fills three cups. He doesn’t ask whether Altaïr will accept it; either he doesn’t care, or he expects the angel to see it as a means of hospitality. Altaïr accepts without fuss, thanking him in a quiet rumble as they take their seats.

 

“Your true name,” says Rashid, and looks to Altaïr, “Is it one you can part with?”

 

Altaïr tilts his head. His fingers cradle the chipped glass that mists with the warmth of the tea. “Names carry weight, of course,” he says, “Mine is Altaïr. My role was originally as al-mu’aqqibah, but I have since come to be assigned differently. Some of my kin – their roles are absolute. Mine isn’t; I wasn’t fashioned to serve a single cause.”

 

“Oh, right. Mentor gets the regal speech, as well as the life story,” mutters Malik, and lips at his tea.

 

Rashid peers at him, and hushes. “You were such an obedient child. Don’t make me question my tutelage, boy.”

 

Malik glares at Altaïr, whose ill-concealed chuckle nearly makes him choke into his tea. “The grace of an angel,” he snarks, for which Altaïr levels him with a glare of equal measure.

 

At Rashid’s prolonged silence, the angel proceeds to straighten up. Malik understands why: his mentor commands a certain level of respect, consciously or no. “I – cannot impart with you the destination we are off to, or the longevity of my accompanying Malik. He says he needs to find his brother, so that’s where I’ll go.”

 

“And the reason as to why – it will remain opaque to us?” inquires Rashid.

 

“My presence with him is commanded thus by the Prophet himself. In this, I have no say.”

 

Rashid hums. “Indeed you would not have a word against His, whose word is absolute. That doesn’t answer the original question: how come Malik is, oncemore, with us? What reason have you, for returning him to the living?”

 

Malik has been subjected to a week’s worth of _I don’t know’s_ , so he’s fully prepared to drink his tea with one finger splayed in a wordless fuck you. “It’s because of my good looks,” he says, blandly.

 

What he doesn’t expect is that Altaïr straightens with the question, ignoring Malik in the process. He lets his mug of tea down onto the tabletop, his shoulders square until they’re almost imposing, slabs of muscle and straining tendons.

 

“Mentor,” says Altaïr, “If you would give me your consent: I would like to add to the wards of this room.”

 

The quiet that befalls the room is deafening. Malik feels goose bumps break out over his arms and trill down his sides, down his legs.

 

His mentor, voice betrayed by nothing once he speaks, says, smoothly, “Of course. Malik will help you with the sigils.”

 

*

 

Malik fetches the water bottles he’s since filled, emptied, refilled, and pockets the small bottle of Red Label from the unnamed Utah gas station that he’d gotten. He stops, out on the porch, to breathe in the fresh air of outdoors. It smells a little like incense, a little simply like the dry dust air that permeates the entirety of this part of America. Incidentally, it smells a little like home.

 

Once he’s content, he heads on inside. The two story house is dimly lit; the light mottled and only aided by chandeliers and dots of independent stearin candles on the verge of bubbling over.

 

Altaïr and Rashid are heaping rugs to the left and right, exposing the gnarly, sigil covered wood beneath. It’s already difficult to find a spot undisturbed by chalk, house paint and perhaps the dark, dried indents of blood, but here and there, they’re able.

 

“We ready to get this show on the road?” asks Malik. He uncaps the Red Label, and takes a long, heady sip. Red Label is shit; worse than Johnnie Walker and old Jack, but, it’s satisfyingly numbing, and it’ll, like any alcohol, help thin his blood.

 

“It’s going to require a pretty hefty amount,” warns Altaïr, “You don’t have to do it all.”

 

Malik shrugs, “Mentor tells me what to do, I do it. Besides, you think pain scares me?”

 

Altaïr, whose eyes track his movements, whose tank exposes thick, tattooed arms, whose head is tilted, almost questioning, makes a noise in disagreement. “No, I don’t.”

 

Malik licks his lips, realizing a split second too late that it’s just going to chap them worse. He unzips his hoodie a little painstakingly. “Well, then,” he says.

 

Altaïr’s hand is steady on the silver knife, on Malik’s exposed arms: of course, he thinks, this is a being that’s watched however many thousands upon thousands of people die. War, disease, murder, natural causes: if he were to guess, this is child’s play, to an angel.

 

He’s not sure why he expects there to be a chain of cause and effect from the moment Altaïr gently grips his elbow, but he does. He almost jolts with it, the energy, or the direct opposite of it.

 

They work methodically. Altaïr’s cuts are precise, and Malik shudders both with the pain, and with how the angel’s palms smooth down the inside of his arm, down his wrist, the lower he goes. The more blood he taps up in the bowl that Rashid has procured. Malik knows, himself, the minimum of how much goes if he has to paint sigils in blood. It’s a lot. It doesn’t make him waver; he has, after all, done this before.

 

He drinks simultaneously. Normally, whenever he touches the alcohol, Rashid glowers at him. But here, he gets nothing more than a lightly disapproving frown, as Malik swigs half the bottle. He rouses only a little, but a little means jostling his arm a little. It’s not much, it doesn’t spill anything; but it means that Altaïr’s hand slips, just a little. It makes the knife’s tip snag a little in the cut he’s making, makes the skin bend and then break away for the metal. Malik hisses, unprepared for the sharpness of the pain. Altaïr’s fingers immediately grip his bicep, and the angel moves unconsciously closer. Malik freezes. “It’s fine,” he mutters, “It’s nothing. Continue.”

 

“Hold still,” says Altaïr, and closes his eyes. His other hand comes up to clasp at Malik, cups the skin where blood wells out. For a moment, there is nothing, Malik feels nothing. And then, an itch incepts across the wound. A buzz, almost tangible enough to be heard, starts up. Malik holds his breath. A pale, eggshell light breaks out from between Altaïr’s loose fingers. Slowly, the wound starts to knit together again.

 

The healing process is instantaneous: Malik draws three, shuddery breaths, and then it’s over. There’s a pink line that ends in a small knot that punctuates his bicep. Otherwise, nothing.

 

Altaïr looks up at him. “I’m sorry,” he intones.

 

Malik doesn’t entirely trust his parched throat, so he only nods, mutely, for the angel to continue, once he’s picked up the knife again.

 

The remainder of gathering the necessary amount of blood goes smoothly. The whiskey is gone since some time, so he pauses to grimace, and to gulp at the water bottles, before Altaïr considers them done. “I’ll paint the sigils,” he says, “Go wrap that up. I’ll get something to accelerate the healing, just – for now.”

 

Rashid leads Malik to the kitchen sink, and twists the tap until it splutters weakly with water. He allows for himself to be washed up in silence. The only remainder of Altaïr painting on angelical wards in the adjacent room is the whine of the floorboards as he moves around.

 

“Mentor,” says Malik. He leans against the kitchen sink whilst Rashid shuffles around the narrow corridor between fridge and cabinets in search for the med kit he keeps somewhere. “Have you heard from Kadar?”

 

Rashid pulls out a few drawers. He opens a few cabinets. He doesn’t reply whilst searching, only hums deep in his throat.

 

“No,” he says, once he returns to Malik, rolls of bandage and a half empty flask of disinfectant in hand. “Your brother left as soon as we’d finished the reading over your grave. I have tried him, but – that is one clever child. He wants to be gone, so he is. I know as little as you.”

 

Malik contemplates this as Rashid douses disinfectant over his cut arm, alcohol running in tendrils down his skin until it dries, a little too soon. He wraps each patch of wounds on the verge of too loose. Malik says nothing of it. “I need to find him,” he says.

 

“I know,” says Rashid. “You will. If anyone will be able to find someone who does not want to be found, it’s you. You’re tenacious, boy, a hunter in every sense of the word.”

 

Malik snorts, “Yeah. Got something out dad, at least.”

 

Rashid doesn’t reply. When it comes to dad, most become tight lipped, close up like live clams. Malik gets them. His and Kadar’s father is like a dormant rash; get rid of the thoughts that incessantly plague you, you’re sure they’ll be returning when least you expect it.

 

Altaïr’s sigils are nothing that Malik has previously studied. They’re intricate, meticulous. Drawn in Old Arabic, Malik squints to even read a quarter of what the symbols attest, much of it lost on his nuanced new age phonetics. He’s painted one below the barred windows, and one before the doorstep. One in each corner of the room, and is working on a large, swirling scripture in the center of the floor. Malik scarcely breathes; he feels as though he’s interrupting something very private, or something holy. Like disturbing mother during Fajr, the room bathed in the early not yet-morning light of the day, her head bowed into her body.

 

“You may enter. I’m just finishing this up,” says Altaïr, dispelling whatever holy notion Malik may have read from the atmosphere.

 

“These wards – “ says Rashid, and there is a trace of something almost wondrous in his tone, “They are unlike anything I have ever seen.”

 

“Angelical wards,” says Altaïr. He stands, wipes his blood stained fingers on his other arm, smearing two blunt lines over the crook of his elbow, “You don’t know them because it hasn’t been necessary for you to know them,” he levels Malik with an unreadable stare, “Angels have not walked among men with the intention of making themselves known for a very long time now.”

 

“Somehow, I get the feeling you’re about to say that now you do, and you’re not allowed to,” says Malik.

 

Altaïr turns to Rashid. He gestures towards their tea, now cold, the tea leaves addled and muddled in the bottom of their glasses limp and discolored. “Please, sit. We don’t have much time, and I wish to make it clear to you why that is.”

 

Malik retakes his seat in the crescent that makes up the three of them, in the midst of Rashid and Altaïr.

 

The angel doesn’t say anything for some time. He stirs his tea up again, and, despite its state, drinks. His face betrays nothing as he sets the glass down again. He looks around, both to Rashid and to Malik, but it’s at Malik that his gaze settles. That the seldom shine of his eyes, when it returns in a glint of light, holds steadfast on Malik’s face.

 

“Jannah is restless. The angels are preparing for something – something that no one talks about, but something which becomes painfully obvious in its omitting of truths. Me and my brothers and sisters, we haven’t been told of anything, but – “

 

Altaïr sinks deeper into himself. His spine curls a little, until he can rest his forearms on his upturned knees, and clasp his hands together. He still doesn’t avert his gaze, and speaks directly to Malik, once he starts up again:

 

“The Day of Judgment is upon us. I believe my orders to retrieve you from the Fire was in preparation of the first major signs to be shown.”

 

*

 

Malik sleeps restlessly. He dreams, but can’t remember of what. His left arm aches a little with the wrapped wounds, and several times he wakes, throat dry and stomach twisting and a shout on his tongue that he never remembers who he intends it for, or what it was. Sleep doesn’t completely avoid him, but he wakes a little more each time it happens, and falls into a light slumber afterwards, begetting the deep REM sleep he needs.

 

He wakes around six, eyes lined with sleep grit, and figures that this is it.

 

He doesn’t dress leisurely, but not with any particular hurry. Outside, some of Rashid’s closer neighbors have been up for a while. Engine rumbles and the distant throng of a car queue rings out over the relatively flat, void landscape of outside. The house is quiet, bar the creaking of when the rooms shift, the echo of old age and a shitty construction job. It’s soothing, and Malik descends the stairs knowing exactly which out of the twenty three levels will groan beneath his weight, and which will remain quiet.

 

His mentor, who has always reverently held to his practices, has been up since dawn, since first morning prayer. Downstairs smells like mint leaves steeped in hot water. On the kitchen counter, which is the first thing he sees when he turns the closest corner, he finds a variety of plates already set out: Labneh, fig, as well as apricot jam, soft bread, and imported olives.

 

It’s been a long time since Malik had anything but cereal bars, vendor coffee and a few watery tomatoes for breakfast. He hasn’t eaten an omelet in years, and even less something that could resemble Rashid’s breakfasts. His mentor’s cooking is mostly only reminiscent of what is made properly in a Syrian household, Rashid says, but it’s enough to still the longing.

 

His mentor, incidentally, is sunk into a chair on the porch, pouring over notes that he’s taken of Altaïr’s sigils from the night before. Malik wanders over, bare feet starch on the fraying planks, balancing three plates of food and tea, and sits plainly on the ground next to his mentor.

 

“This is early yet for you,” remarks his mentor, without looking up from his sketchpad.

 

“I’m almost thirty,” Malik points out, “Not the sixteen year old kid with insomnia anymore.”

 

“Hm,” says his mentor, “Sleep is not a bother for you, then?”

 

“I didn’t say that. Just that I’ve become – appreciative, of an early rise. Nothing like taking out a nest before ten AM.” He sips his tea, nearly scalds his tongue on the hot water.

 

Rashid tuts disapprovingly, “Well, you’ve yet to become appreciative of letting your tea rest properly.”

 

Malik waves the comment away, and sets to devouring his breakfast instead. They sit in companionable silence, the only disturbance between them the scratch of Rashid’s pencil, or the noises Malik makes while eating.

 

An hour and a half later, Malik notes footsteps from inside the house. Altaïr emerges from inside, pulling a hand over his buzzed head, dressed in a short sleeved linen shirt, retaining his black trousers. He nods to Malik. “How’s the arm?”

 

“Good morning to you too,” says Malik, raising an eyebrow. He shrugs, “Arm’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”

 

“I could heal it,” says Altaïr.

 

“Then you would’ve already done so,” says Malik, “Wouldn’t you?”

 

Altaïr doesn’t immediately respond, so Malik assumes he’s hit a correct spot. “Your healing mojo’s connected to Jannah, isn’t it? And right now, you don’t want to be found out. That’s why you didn’t heal me all up last night.”

 

Rashid has ceased his sketching. Malik can feel the heavy weight of his mentor’s gaze on the back of his neck. Altaïr’s silence has taken on a pensive note. Malik pushes on, the worming in his gut telling him that this is right: “You risked your position because you nicked me yesterday. I’m wondering why you did.”

 

The shift in Altaïr’s ribcage is almost unnoticeable, but it’s there. It makes Malik force to suppress a shiver. The angel, for whatever reason, can’t risk their position, and yet he’d used an ability completely and irrevocably tied to his brethren to heal up, what – a scratch?

 

Altaïr meets his gaze. His is unreadable. “I’ve found your brother,” he says, “He’s in Detroit, which means we better get a move on, soon.”

 

*

 

When they set out, the air is trembling with the force of a yet to be shed-storm. The sky is overcast with iron, and the winds are strong and cold. Despite this, the back of Malik’s neck is damp with sweat, and Altaïr’s collar is faintly wet.

 

He embraces Rashid by the car.

 

“You take care of yourself now, boy,” says Rashid, into Malik’s hair.

 

Malik hooks a stray curl around his ear, and nods. “I will, I promise. No trips downward.”

 

Rashid raises an eyebrow. He looks to Altaïr, “See to that he does not,” he says, dry as the desert.

 

Altaïr tips an imaginary hat. “I promise he won’t, mentor,” he says.

 

The El Camino, bone white with dust and dirt after more than a week plowing miles on the road, its leather seats creaking with the heat, rumbles to life beneath them. As they drive out of the scrapyard, a stroke of lightning bends the sky into split parts, and a strong quake of thunder follows.

 

“There’s a storm coming,” says Malik, a little unnecessarily.

 

“It is,” replies Altaïr.

 

*  
 

**Author's Note:**

> fun fact: i unintentionally wrote 1983 as the factual title of the t swift album. turns out i know as much about her as malik.
> 
> the idea that morphed into this is entirely dedicated to my and a friend's oldest co-playlist on spotify, dating from way back when we were reverent altmal fans who hung out at deviantart and wrote angsty one-shots and cracky multi-chapter HS AUs. i accidentally put it on at the airport, listened approx. 10 seconds in to daughtry's _life after you_ , and thought: altmal destiel AU. why
> 
>  
> 
> the fuck not  
>  
> 
> and here i am. liberties taken with canon are obviously screwing the story around a bit, as well as (attempting) to switch most christian lore out in favor of islam.
> 
> i had a blast writing this. it's a bit more loose and free-flowing than most of my other work. it allowed me to write quicker and not think too much about style and presentation. this just is. i tried my hand at an altaïr who is, after all, an angel, a manifestation of allah's will and message, who's been around for eons and eons - he's not the novice he is in-game. he's bound to have collected some stray wisdom along the path of the celestial life. and a malik who isn't burdened by the death of his brother, but who _is_ burdened by keeping himself and his brother tf alive and out of hell. and harm's way (mostly). tl;dr i hope you'll enjoy it as much as i did creating it!
> 
> find me on [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/ddelline).


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